The next passage to which I will refer you, where God absolutely commands polygamy, will be found in Exodus, 22nd chapter, 16th and 17th verses:
And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife.
If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins.
There is the law of Exodus; now let us turn to the law of Deuteronomy, 22nd chapter, 28th and 29th verses, on the same subject:
If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.
Does this mean an unmarried man? The law was given to a nation wherein both forms of marriage were recognized, and wherein single men existed. If it does mean single men alone, we would like to hear the proof. The law is general. Whether married or unmarried, whether a monogamist or polygamist, if he committed this crime, if he found a maid and committed the crime there specified, of seduction, there is the law; he shall marry her, and shall not only marry her, but shall pay a fine of fifty shekels of silver to the father. This was the penalty; not that they were justified in the act. It mattered not whether he was a polygamist, a monogamist, or an unmarried man, he must comply with the law as a penalty. That was another command establishing and sanctioning polygamy, sanctioning it by Divine command. If this law could have been put in force in modern times, among modern Christian nations, what a vast amount of evil would have been avoided in the earth. It is proverbial that among all the nations of modern Europe, as well as in our own great nation—Christian nations—there is a vast amount of prostitution, houses of ill-lame, and prostitutes of various forms; now, if this law, which God gave to Israel, had been re-enacted by the law-makers and legislatures and parliaments of these various nations, what would have been the consequence? In a very short time there would not have been a house of ill-fame in existence. Their inmates would have all been married off to their seducers, or their patrons; for who does not know that females would far rather be married than prostitute themselves as they do at the present time? And they would lie in wait to entrap this man and that man, and the other man, to get out of these brothels, and, as the law is general, if the same law had existed in our day, it would soon have broken up houses of ill-fame. There might have been some secret evils; but it would have broken up the "social evil."
The next passage to which I will refer you is in 2nd Chronicles, 24th chapter, 2nd, 3rd, 15th and 18th verses:
And Joash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest. And Jehoiada took for him two wives, and he begat sons and daughters.
According to the ideas of monogamists, Jehoiada must have been a very wicked man, and Joash "a beastly polygamist" for taking two wives. We will take the man who received the wives first. Joash, who received the wives from the highest authority God had on the earth, did "right in the sight of the Lord, all the days of Jehoiada the priest." What! Did he do right when Jehoiada took two wives for him and gave them to him? Yes; so says the word of God, the Bible, and you know the question is "Does the Bible sanction Polygamy?" But what a dreadful priest that man must have been, according to the arguments of monogamists! Let us see what kind of a character he appears. In this same chapter, 28th verse, if I recollect aright: (looking). No, in the 15th and 16th verses we read:
But Jehoiada waxed old, and was full of days when he died; a hundred and thirty years old was he when he died. And they buried him in the city of David among the kings, because he had done good in Israel, both toward God, and toward his house.
"Because he had done good in Israel, both toward God and towards his house," they buried him among the kings, honored him in that manner; and the reason why they did bestow this great honor upon him was because he had done good. In the first place he had given two wives to Joash, which was a very good act, for he was the highest authority God had upon the earth at that time; and God sanctioned polygamy by lengthening out the age of this man to 130 years, a very long age in those days.